moodle assignment grading

Documentation

• Advanced grading methods
• Grading quick guide
• Grader report
• Grade settings
• Managing grades
• Grade aggregation
• Grade points
• Grade import
• Grade export

Advanced grading methods enable various assessment forms to be used for calculating grades. They may be used in Assignment and Forum activities.

• 1 Advanced grading method types
• 2 Basic concepts
• 3 Configuring an activity module to use advanced grading methods
• 4.1 Modifying the form after it has been used
• 5.1 Shared templates
• 5.2 Re-using own forms without sharing them
• 5.3 Permissions
• 5.4 Sharing your grading forms world-wide
• 6 What the students see
• 7 Rubric feedback for student view when Anonymous Marking is used

Advanced grading method types

• Marking guide

There are also add-ons available in the 'See also' section below.

Basic concepts

By default, the teacher selects numerical grades in Moodle from a range like 0–100. When advanced grading methods are enabled, the grade selection element is replaced with the plugin's more complex assessment form. The plugin contains the logic of how to calculate the grade. The calculated grade is then passed back to the activity module as if the teacher used the standard grade value selector.

For each activity, a new copy of the assessment form is created. Note that this is different from how scales work. While scales are defined at the site level or course level and can be used in all activities, advanced grading forms create a new copy of the form definition for every activity that uses it. So a change in the form definition in one assignment does not affect other places where the same rubric is used.

The grading form definition is part of the activity data. It is included in the activity's backup, and it is copied when the activity is duplicated via the "x2" icon or imported from another course.

Configuring an activity module to use advanced grading methods

Modules that support advanced grading methods have the grading method selector included in their settings form (for example, in the Assignment settings form). The teacher can choose either 'Simple direct grading' or one of the installed grading methods plugins. Selecting 'Simple direct grading' means that the advanced grading is not used and the standard grade selector is displayed.

An alternative way is to follow the' Advanced grading' link in Administration > Activity administration . The link leads to a page where the current active grading method can be changed, too.

The form definition and the associated assessment data are stashed when the grading method is changed from one type to another. That means it is safe to change the current active grading method from 'Rubric' to 'Simple direct grading' and back to 'Rubric'. The rubric definition is kept in the database, although it may not be available while the current grading method is set to another method.

Assessment form definition

The link 'Advance grading' in the activity settings form leads to a management screen where the assessment form can be defined, edited, deleted and eventually shared as a public template (if the user has such permission). If there is no form of the selected method defined yet, there are two options:

• Define new grading form from scratch - creates a blank grading form and lets you define it. Each grading plugin provides its own grading form editor.
• Create a new grading form from a template - lets you re-use a previously defined form. You can copy any of your grading forms (that is, those you have created elsewhere) or a grading form that was shared as a public template at your site.

Every grading form has a name and a description. These are not displayed to students. The description should summarize the form, explain its usage etc.

The grading form definition can be saved as a draft or as a final version. If the grading form is saved as a draft, it can't be used for assessment. To release the form and make it available for assessment, save it using the button 'Save and make it ready'. The current status of the form definition is indicated via a tag displayed next to the form name.

Modifying the form after it has been used

It may happen that you define a grading form, make it ready for usage and start assessing students with it. After some time, you realize there is a typo in the form or that it should be improved significantly (like adding another criterion into the rubric). In such a case, you are about to edit a form already used for assessment.

If the grading plugin considers your change significant, it may force you to mark all current assessments with a special flag 'Needs review'. You have to go through all existing assessments made by the previous form and re-assess them to make the calculated grades valid a comparable. If the change seems to be trivial (e.g. fixing a typo in the text), the form editor may ask you to decide whether the existing assessment should be marked with the 'Needs review' flag or not.

Please note, when other people are using the form for assessment (e.g. several non-editing teachers in the course participate in the submissions assessment), even a trivial rewording can be understood as a significant change in the criterion meaning. Make sure you communicate the changes well with your colleagues.

Re-using assessment forms

Instead of defining the new grading form from scratch, you can use some existing form as the initial template to create it from. When clicking the 'Create new grading form from a template' icon, a new page opens, and you can search for a grading form there. Type words that appear somewhere in the form name, its description or the form body itself. To search for a phrase, wrap the whole query in double quotes.

Shared templates

Users who were given special permission can save their grading forms as shared templates on the site. Such forms can be then picked and re-used by all teachers in their courses. Users who published the form as a template can also delete it from the list of shared templates. See Grading forms publisher for more information. There is also another permission to manage the whole "bank" of shared templates. Users with this permission can delete any shared template, even if they are not its authors. See Grading forms manager for more information.

Grading forms can be shared at the site level only. There is no way to share forms at lower context levels (e.g. at the course category level as the question bank does).

Re-using own forms without sharing them

By default, only the grading forms that have been saved as shared templates are included in the search results. You can also include all your grading forms in the search results. This way, you can re-use your grading forms without sharing them. Only forms marked as 'Ready for usage' can be re-used this way.

Permissions

Two capabilities affect the user's permission to work with templates.

• Share advanced grading form as a template ( moodle/grade:sharegradingforms ) - grants the ability to save a grading form as a new shared template and eventually edit and remove own templates (templates originally shared by that user). Users with the role of manager are given this permission by default. To allow others to do this, see Grading forms publisher .
• Manage advanced grading form templates ( moodle/grade:managesharedforms ) - grants the ability to edit and remove any shared template, even those originally shared by other users. To allow trusted teachers to do this, see Grading forms manager .

Sharing your grading forms world-wide

At the moment, there is no way how to export/import grading form definitions. The known workaround is to create an empty assignment module and attach the grading form to it. Then make a standard activity backup of this assignment in the MBZ format and share it. By restoring the assignment, the attached grading form is restored, too. It can be then picked for your activities or shared as a template at your site.

What the students see

When students click on an assignment with a rubric or marking guide attached to it, they will see the rubric or marking guide as part of the information about their assignment.

Rubric feedback for student view when Anonymous Marking is used

Note: When anonymous marking is used, students will receive a notification, but will not see rubric feedback until all submissions are marked and reveal student identities is clicked. That releases rubric marks and inline comment feedback to all students.

• Learning Analytics Enriched Rubric
• BTEC marking for use with Moodle assignments

Using Moodle forum discussions:

• A few Advanced Grading questions for Moodle 2.2.1
• Wrong Gradebook Calculation from 2.2 Rubric

Making the most of Moodle’s Assignments for formative and summative assessment

Moodle’s assignment activities are easy to set up and offer many possibilities to create unique learning experiences for your students.

The Assignment activity in Moodle allows students to submit work for their teachers to grade or assess. The learners’ submissions may be text typed online or uploaded files of any format that the teachers specify. While creating an Assignment is quite straightforward, this activity has several settings that educators can combine to create unique experiences for their learners. 

Moodle Assignment for formative and summative assessment

Because it has so many combinations of configuration, the Assignment activity can be used both for formative assessment and summative evaluation. The table below outlines the goals and characteristics of each type of assessment: 

In formative assessment the goal is to monitor student learning therefore the assignments should be set to be always available, without necessarily being graded, allowing additional attempts, with no pass grade required (if it is graded). The  activity completion is usually set to “view” or “submit”. An formative assignment such as this often gets a 0% weight in the gradebook. 

In summative assessment, the goal is to evaluate student learning via assessment, thus a summative assignment is usually  set up with clear start, end and cut-off dates. It will be graded, with additional attempts to re-open the assessment set manually. Summative assessments are usually set with a required pass grade and the activity completion linked to requiring a “grade”. Summative assignments often have a weight higher than 20% in the gradebook.

Moodle Assignment submissions

There are many ways to combine submission types and settings in Assignment activity to achieve your teaching and learning goals or simply streamline your class management:

Assignments with no submission required These are assignments where learners don’t have to submit anything to complete the assessment. While this may sound counterintuitive, this type of Assignment can be used, for instance, for offline assessment -use it as an attendance sheet on a field trip- or for example, to assess a face-to-face speaking Assignment where learners really don’t have anything to submit. 

Assignments with online text submission With this type of Assignment submissions, learners add their work directly into the Assignment activity using the Atto editor, a rich text editor that allows learners to write text, add images and even record audio or video files. For this and for all other submission types, you can enable an option to allow learners to work in draft versions of their Assignment before sending the final submission.

Assignments with file submission This type of submission for Assignments requires learners to submit a file -teachers can define its format and size- for teachers to evaluate. To streamline the grading process, teachers can download all submissions at once, including a grading worksheet that displays the user name, email and submission status and allows teachers to add a grade and feedback in comments – and then bulk-upload all assessments back to Moodle, including a separate feedback file for each submission.

Group assignments in Moodle Collaborative learning is at the heart of Moodle LMS, so Moodle Assignments can easily be set up to be submitted as a group. Teachers can set these Assignments up so that only one of the group members has to submit the file, or make it mandatory for each team member to make the submission. Favourite tip: Our Moodle Academy team recommends combining this type of Assignment with a peer evaluation to know how the experience was for each of the group members.

Grading Moodle Assignments

Moodle Assignments support two main types of grading: simple direct grading and advanced grading. The first group includes grading done through numerical scales, custom scales (for example, stars or words like weak , satisfactory , strong , etc) or no grading at all. Advanced grading methods in Moodle include rubrics and marking guides, and we’ll look at them in more detail:

Moodle Assignment: assessment with marking guides In this type of grading, the teacher defines a series of criteria and assigns a maximum amount of marking points to each. When assessing learners’ assignments, the teachers provide both a numerical mark and a comment for each of the criteria. For this type of grading, you can make the criteria and maximum marking points available for learners to see – this helps them know what’s expected from them and what they need to cover in their submission. Favourite tip: Use ‘frequently used comments’ to speed up your grading process and to ensure that your grading is consistent.

Moodle Assignment: assessment with rubrics For grading with rubrics, teachers create a set of criteria with several levels of achievement, all displayed on a table. Sharing the rubric with learners is important, as it lets learners know how they’ll be assessed. For each submission, the rubric will be displayed to teachers, who then can select the level of accomplishment for each of the criteria just by clicking on it, as well as leave written feedback if necessary.

Moodle Assignment: assessment with marking workflow When you set up a marking workflow for an Assignment, it means that learners’ work can be assessed by several teachers. You can manually design the workflow and define the sequence of states (eg not marked , in marking , marked ), as well as allocate marking to another teacher.

This content has been extracted from the Moodle Academy webinar Assessment: exploring Assignments, facilitated by Moodle Education Advisor Anna Krassa. Watch the full webinar on our Moodle Academy site to see 7 real life examples on how you can combine submission types and grading types with availability and different types of feedback to create the right Assignment for your teaching and learning goals .

Upcoming Moodle Academy Webinar ABC Learning Design 17 November 2021

Learn about the ABC Learning Design, the rapid curriculum design method and will get guidelines on how to run your own ABC workshop.

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Moodle 101: How Does Moodle Grading Work?

Confused about Moodle Grading? In the teaching and learning process grading is an essential component since it informs both students and teachers of their progress in terms of level and provides feedback on the efficiency of the teaching strategies and study aids employed.

Grading activities is an important part of your job as a teacher, but it may be a time-consuming activity. Making grading easier will help you finish other items on your to-do list and save time so you can focus more on planning for future classroom events.

A variety of Moodle activities can be graded (an activity must first be configured as graded). Once a student submits an assignment, the teacher can immediately enter the marks, assessment, or grade to the student from the same activity, and the result is automatically added to the grade book. A column in the gradebook is automatically created for each activity that has been graded. New columns can be manually created and filled with grades and marks.

If there is one feature that distinguishes Moodle, it is the numerous options for creating tests and assessments. Instead of using a grading method just because it is available, it is important to know why you should choose one over the other. The idea here is to create a plan and implement it in Moodle. The platform serves as a tool to help you meet your learning objectives in this way.

Similarly, Moodle provides an essential set of tools for assessing, grading, and evaluating. This means that there are very few platforms capable of competing with Moodle. So, keep this in mind to ensure that you can apply the strategy that best satisfies your objectives.

The Moodle Gradebook: How to Get Started

Your Moodle course assignments, tasks, and/or manual grades are automatically compiled into a single score and piece of feedback in the Moodle Gradebook. Students can check their grades in personalized reports that safeguard student privacy. The gradebook may be displayed to students at certain times and in certain ways, or the instructor may completely hide it.

It is possible for teachers and teaching assistants to manually input and amend grades in the gradebook, and import grades from external sources such as OWL, iClicker, and Opscan. Or export the gradebook to another software program like Excel.

Moodle keeps track of all gradebook modifications so that instructors can verify who made what changes and when. Based on the instructor’s assigned grading scale, the gradebook keeps track of each student’s overall course grade. 

Setting Up the Moodle Gradebook

The Moodle gradebook offers a number of features and functionalities that will assist you in navigating to the locations where you need to be in order to do the activities you desire. The gradebook offers a variety of choices for calculating and displaying grades. Your gradebook can be set up in advance of the semester or created as you go.

Setup and Organize Grade Items and Categories

The course gradebook in a Moodle course automatically adds matching grade items (columns) when activities like Assignments or Quizzes are uploaded. In order to record more grade components, Moodle also allows you to manually add columns to your gradebook. It is acceptable to create your gradebook as you go in both of these scenarios, but when it comes to determining final grades, the organization of these factors is necessary to guarantee accuracy.

Calculating Grades

Allowing Moodle to handle calculations is the simplest approach to determining grades. If you need subtotals, Moodle includes built-in computations (aggregations) to figure out the grade for the entire course. 

When accrediting grades, Moodle offers three options: 

• Natural –  the total of all grade values.
• Mean of grades – the total of all grades divided by the total number of grades. 
• Custom weights – where weights are assigned as a proportion of the overall grade to certain items or categories.

If you need more operations, you could also make a special formula.

Rubrics and Non-numerical Scales for Grading

Some Moodle activities offer to grade using rubrics and non-numeric scales if you prefer alternate techniques for reviewing student work.

Rubrics are helpful when you want to evaluate student work based on a variety of criteria. When evaluating Assignment activities, you can set a rubric and criteria using advanced grading options, and the rubric will produce an overall grade.

Custom Scales are useful when you want students to view Excellent, Good, Fair, and so on as a grade on an item rather than a numerical number. While non-numeric assessments can be displayed using bespoke scales, the gradebook will still be able to do computations with these items if necessary.

Display Grades in Percentages And Letters

You can choose to display grades to students as a letter, a percentage, or a numeric number by modifying the settings in your gradebook. The Grade type of Points is used by default in Moodle activities, with a maximum grade of 100.

You can alter grade limits on the gradebook Letters tab by matching score ranges to letter grades (e.g., 93.00-100.00 for A). Following that, when grading, input the number that corresponds to the letter grade you want to give (for example, 90 for a B+). Students will see the right letter grade when Moodle generates letter grades since it compares numerical scores to the ranges in the Letters settings.

Although, only numerical scores may be recorded for grade elements connected to Moodle activities. For Moodle in the Cloud, it is no longer possible to manually grade items in Moodle by entering letter grades. Letter grades can be shown to students as a percentage, but instructors must record or import grades as points.

Edit The Activity Name of Every Column In The Gradebook

A new column will be automatically created in the gradebook for a Moodle activity after it has been configured to be graded. The column will have the same name as the activity. If the name is lengthy, only the first 12 characters are shown as the column name. Therefore, it is advised that you give the activities short, distinct titles. 

New columns can be manually created and filled with grades and marks. Instead of establishing a new column and entering the results, if at all possible, think about using an assignment.

As you add the graded activities to the course, columns are created in the gradebook to reflect this. For this reason, it is frequently required to afterward arrange the columns in the proper sequence. It is fair to establish categories (from chosen columns) and sort columns into categories if there are several graded activities in the course.

Setting Up An Automated System To Verify For Passing Grades

The learner’s performance can be automatically checked to see if it complies with standards using the gradebook configuration options. 

For instance, if all of the assignments have been passed (marked on a pass/fail scale) and the average of all quizzes is at least 80%, the course is considered passed if graded using the 10-point scale. Or the course grade is a letter grade determined by the points earned, but it is only considered successful if the learner has passed all non-differentiated examinations. 

A formula can be used to determine the passing grade. The formula is dependent on the display type and the configuration of the course’s total grade

Prepare The Final Grades

You can easily shift grades from the Moodle gradebook to your SPIRE grade roster at the end of the semester. Using a scale of your choice, Moodle will convert numerical grades to letter grades. You can still change grades after importing them into SPIRE before the Registrar approves and receives them.

How Does Grading Work With Moodle?

The gradebook automatically compiles the results of graded Moodle activities. Entries in the gradebook are always numeric so Moodle can simply aggregate grades automatically. 

Although this can be changed in the Assignment options for each activity, the default rating for each activity is 100. The weights of individual assignments or groups of assignments can then be adjusted in the gradebook to get the overall grade for the class.

You can create a grading system and use it to display letter grades to students based on percentage. Grading can be fairly simple if you use Moodle techniques. It is possible to grade using your own procedures, although it can necessitate additional processes and workarounds.

Some tasks, like the Turnitin and Moodle assignments, let you apply a rubric or grading form to determine your grade.

Manually added grade items (with the exception of Moodle activities like quizzes or assignments) can be adjusted to allow you to type or import actual letters if you choose to grade exclusively using letters and do not want to enter numerical values. It should be noted that using this method excludes the use of numerical scores and prevents Moodle from calculating an overall course grade.

You can give feedback on the majority of Moodle activities using a (verbal) Scale that includes terms like “outstanding,” “unsatisfactory,” and “satisfactory.”  It should be noted that each custom scale value has a number associated with it, so you should consider how those numbers will combine to determine a course’s overall grade.

Students can view written feedback next to their grade if you add it. When grading from within the activity, some activities (including Assignments, Turnitin assignments, Quizzes, and Workshops) have a place for writing written feedback. The gradebook also allows you to add comments for graded objects.

How to Grade your Moodle Assignments: 3 Methods

There are three options for grading systems in the Moodle assignment activity in addition to the standard options like points and scales. “Simple direct grading,” “marking guidelines,” and “rubric” are the three options.

Simple Direct Grading

Simple Direct Grading is by far the simplest to implement. When you create an assignment, this is the default setting. You have the choice of giving an overall score and overall feedback when grading a submission. Even though the simple direct way of grading is straightforward, it depends on the feedback remark box as the main tool for informing students of their areas of strength and weakness in the assignment. 

The rubric is precisely what it says it is. In your course, you can create a rubric that you can use to grade tasks in Moodle. You will be taken to a screen where you can either start generating a rubric from the beginning or modify the one you have already established as a template once you choose the rubric technique and save your assignment.

When using a rubric to grade work, you can enter feedback at the appropriate criterion level by clicking on the level the student has achieved. If you want to have an area for feedback on the entire assignment or remarks not covered by the rubric, there is also a spot for an overall feedback comment.

Marking Guide

The Marking Guide functions as a halfway point between the rubric and simple direct grading. The marking guide approach enables the mark to be broken up into criteria while still providing direct grading boxes for each criterion, as opposed to having the criteria and levels of the rubric method.

There is a feedback box for each requirement in your marking guide, as well as a direct grading box that allows you to enter the student’s level and your chosen point total.

Final Thoughts On Moodle Grading

Moodle is an extremely adaptable learning platform that lets you select or combine several grading techniques. Grading can be quite simple if you follow the Moodle guidelines. It is feasible to grade using your own procedures, although it can necessitate extra steps and hacks. As you grade on Moodle, we hope that some of these thoughts will be helpful.

Looking to take your Moodle course to the next level? Whether you need some help selecting and configuring new plugins, designing your site or something more complicated, our team of Moodle experts is here to help.

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Learning and Teaching

• Assessment & Feedback

Advanced Grading in Moodle

Published on: 19/09/2023 · Last updated on: 19/06/2024

What is advanced grading?

Advanced grading is a grading method that can be used in Moodle Assignments and Forums.

Advanced grading allows Moodle Teachers to define one of two grading forms – either a Marking guide or a Rubric .

• Example marking guide
• Example rubric

In this example marking guide, you can see predefined criteria, with allocated marks and space to enter feedback comments

How do staff and students use it effectively?

Clear marking criteria will help students understand what any particular assessment task is looking for. Marking guides and Rubrics can help ensure assessment guidelines, success criteria and next steps are clear for students and staff.

Staff can decide which options they use when setting up their Marking guide or Rubric but we would recommend you consider the following:

• Choose the setting to make the criteria descriptions visible to students in advance, and let them know that they can view these by accessing the assignment submission point.  You may need to highlight to them how to view the marking criteria at the early stages.  
• If you’re using the Rubric or Marking guide for formative feedback, you can choose to hide the points awarded from students.
• It’s important to include feedback comments and to personalise the feedback provided.  You can choose how to use the rubric and marking guide in combination with feedback comments. You can either have feedback comments for each assessment criterion, or you can make an overall feedback comment. 

In this example rubric, you can see a simple rubric with criteria and levels selected. You can add feedback comments for each criterion.

How might I use it?

To get set up, please view the following guidance videos:

Watch this short video [6 mins 17 secs] which demonstrates how the set up a Rubric:

Rubrics – Advanced marking in Moodle video

Watch this short video [7 mins] which demonstrates how the set up a Marking guide:

Marking guide – Advanced marking in Moodle video

Downloading marked grading forms

Although you can see completed rubrics and marking guides inside of each student’s grading page, it is also possible to see and download the associated grades and feedback for all your students in one go. 

• In the Course navigation menu, click onto the Grades tab
• Select either Rubrics Report or Marking Guide Report (as appropriate) from the drop down menu at the top of the page
• Select the activity you wish to view the feedback for and press the Submit button

All relevant grading information appears on the screen, and can be downloaded for offline review.

Reusing grading forms

The Advanced grading tab within an assignment or forum activity enables Moodle Teachers to select or switch between grading methods.  If you have selected an advanced grading method on this page (rubric or marking guide) a management screen will appear.

To use an existing grading rubric or marking guide, select Create new grading form from a template.

By default, a number of pre-defined templates will appear, however a search function located at the top of the page will enable you to search for and reuse your own rubrics and marking guides.

Note : Only rubrics and marking guides that you have previously been marked as ‘Ready for usage’ (i.e. that are attached to an existing activity) can be re-used this way.

Sharing grading forms with others

At the current time, there is no export/import option for rubrics and marking guides, however the workaround is to create a new activity (such as an assignment) and attach the relevant grading form to it. You can then create a backup of this activity and share the resulting .mbz file with others.

By restoring the activity , the attached grading form is restored too.

Note:   If you delete all of the activities that make use of a specific rubric or marking guide, you also delete all copies of that grading form.

The main difference between a Marking Guide and Rubric is the points/marks awarded for each criterion. For the Rubric, only a set number of points can be awarded depending on the preset levels of each criterion. In a Marking Guide the grader can choose the points awarded up to the maximum points allowed for the given criterion.  

Marking Guide 

• You can set up a marking guide in Moodle using the Advanced Grading options. 
• In Moodle, the marking guide is a feedback form where you can describe the learning outcomes or assessment criteria. The form provides a box to enter feedback comments for each criterion. 
• You can allocate a maximum mark for each criterion. 
• The marking guide allows you to build up a bank of frequently used comments. 
• General feedback and criteria comments can be made visible to students.
• Can be re-used and/or shared with colleagues.

Rubric 

• You can set up a rubric in Moodle using the Advanced grading options. 
• In Moodle, the rubric is presented in a grid format. There are rows for the different assessment criteria or learning outcomes, and columns for the expected performance levels. 
• You can assign a score to each performance level. 
• You can decide whether to display the breakdown of marks to students, or just the descriptors. 
• The overall mark is calculated by the rubric. 
• A well-constructed rubric can speed up the marking process, improve consistency of feedback and provide the student with a clear explanation of their final grade.

Staff can decide which options they use but we would recommend you consider the following.

• It’s important to share the marking criteria with students before the assessment. You may need to highlight to them how to view the marking criteria at the early stages.
• Choose the setting to make the rubric or criteria descriptions visible to students in advance, and let them know that they can view these by accessing the assignment submission point.
• If you’re using the rubric or marking guide for formative feedback, you can choose to hide the points awarded per criterion from students (they will still see the total grade awarded).
• You can use the rubric or marking guide in combination with a Letter scale to provide indicative feedback (for example Pass or Fail) instead of a percentage mark.
• You can choose how to use the rubric in combination with feedback comments, so you can either have feedback comments for each assessment criterion, or you can make an overall feedback comment. It’s important to include feedback comments, to personalise the feedback provided.
• You could also choose to annotate the submitted assignments, as the rubric and marking guide can be used in combination with the other feedback methods in Moodle.

No, Moodle will scale the rubric/marking guide score to 100 even if your rubric/marking guide doesn’t add up to 100 (assuming you haven’t changed this in the assignment settings) e.g. an assignment with a rubric/marking guide that scores 20/40 will appear as 50/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

The  rubric  will work out the marks based on the points awarded for each criterion. When you create the rubric, you will be able to determine the points each level is worth.

For example, if you have chosen the levels in the green boxes for each criterion, the student would receive a mark of 6/9, this will appear as 66.7/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

The  marking  guide will work out the marks based on the points decided by the grader, the grader can only give a score up to the maximum marks.

For example, if the grader awards a mark of 7 on the assignment below, the student will receive a mark of 7/10, this will appear as 70/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

Some rubrics identify a percentage weighting for each criterion (or level) but this is not obvious in a Moodle Rubric.

You can modify the weight of any criterion by setting the value of the points assigned to its levels. If there is one criterion with levels 0, 1, 2, 3 and the second one with levels 0, 2, 4, 6 then the latter’s impact on the final grade is twice as much as the former’s.

Note that Moodle will always scale to 100 (the Assignment default).  It’s recommended to leave the total score at 100 in order to use the grade transfer functionality. 

No. Both these assessment methods must be completed online in Moodle’s grading screen.  If you would like to export submissions to work and mark offline you will need to mark with Simple direct marking .  

Marking guide:  Yes, a marking guide can be edited once in use. A warning will appear if the marking guide has already been used for grading and will ask you if the assignment needs to be regraded or not. 

Rubric:  Yes, but editing the levels or values of the criterion will not change the grade book value already given to students. The assignment will need to be regraded.

This depends on how the markers want to work.

Double (not blind) marking could use a marking guide where each marker adds a feedback comment with their initials.

In rubrics you can choose to have feedback comment boxes for each criterion, but only show these to markers.  These could be used to explain ‘levels’ chosen for moderation with other markers.

Yes, in the Marking guide, other graders on the unit will be able to see and use the frequently used comments saved for that assignment.

Yes. You can search your own grading forms in the search box. This way, you can simply re-use your grading forms. Only forms marked as ‘Ready for usage’ can be re-used this way.

Click Create new grading form from template.

Click the box to include your own forms and click Search.  Then select the link to use the form.

Each time you reuse a marking guide or rubric, a new version is created.  This means you can edit the new version without it affecting any of the previous versions.

To re-use a marking guide or rubric in a different Moodle course you will have to Backup and Restore the activity.

Only the Marking Guide option gives you the chance to use ‘frequently used comments’.  If a teacher regularly uses the same comments when marking, it is possible to add these to a frequently used comments bank. 

• Click the Click to edit link and add a comment. 
• Click the +Add frequently used comment button to add another one and repeat as needed. 

When you reuse a marking guide the frequently used comments will be duplicated for reuse too. 

Read a  case study about using a rubric for open ended assessment .

Further reading

• Moodle Doc: Advanced Grading Methods
• Brookhart, S.M., Chapter 1. What Are Rubrics and Why Are They Important? [Online] Chapter Preview In: How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading, USA: ASCD. Available from: www.ascd.org

Related Articles

• Anonymous marking in Moodle
• Group Peer Review for Teachers
• How to mark an Assignment offline and upload feedback
• Using Ouriginal
• How to create an Assignment
• How to release grades and feedback

Article Contents

Moodle Help and Tutorials

• Technical Requirements
• Moodle Glossary
• Managing Your Moodle Preferences
• Adding Videos
• Grading Assignments

Reviewing and Grading Moodle Assignments

• Turnitin Assignments
• Video Assignments (Using Echo360) This link opens in a new window
• Discussion Forum Types
• Respondus Lockdown Browser/Monitor
• Additional Moodle Quiz Functions
• Submitting Grades to Self-Service
• Hypothes.is
• Starfish Early Alert
• Student Course Experience Surveys
• Student Guides
• Reviewing and Grading
• Using Rubrics and Grading Guides
• Rubric Grading
• Using a Grading Guide

• How to grade an assignment (via Assignment Activity) Depending on the assignment, grading can be done with or without a file submission by the student. The following document outlines direct grading (entering of a number vs use of a rubric or marking guide), and methods of reviewing student submissions, such as Word or PDF documents.
• How do I enter grades manually into Moodle's gradebook? There are many ways to enter grades for student assignment submissions in Moodle. The methods in this guide outline entering grades directly into the gradebook (manually). Doing so for activities listed on the main Moodle course page may “override” the activity grade, so make sure that the activity will not be graded both via the gradebook and via the activity. For example, if you are using an Assignment activity, consider entering grades via the assignment and not directly into the gradebook.
• How do I grade assignments with a rubric? Rubrics can be used in the Assignment and Discussion Forum activities to assess and provide feedback for students based on particular criteria. In Moodle, a rubric will have the same performance scale for each chosen criteria in which you can grade the student submission on.
• How do I grade assignments with a grading guide? The Assignment and Discussion Forum activities allows you to create and use a grading guide, similar to a rubric, as an advanced grading method from within the Moodle interface. Your students can have access to the grading guide before submitting their assignments as well as after. You have the option to provide comments for each criterion and overall comments.
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• Last Updated: Aug 20, 2024 5:05 PM
• URL: https://libguides.viterbo.edu/Moodle